The MRC's Presidential Spoiler Game
The Media Research Center briefly turned its ironic support toward Dean Phillips as a Democratic spoiler, then returned to cheering Robert Kennedy Jr. -- despite being appalled by his actual views.
The Media Research Center ironically embraced Robert Kennedy Jr. — a candidate its employees would never vote for — as a spoiler for President Biden’s re-election. Then, when Kennedy switched to running as an independent, the MRC quickly dropped him and embraced a different long-shot Democrat, Dean Phillips. It continued that ironic support do so as the presidential primaries got underway. Tim Graham complained in a Jan. 13 post:
Politico columnist Michael Schaeffer sympathetically interviewed Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips, congressman from Minnesota, about how he’s been “blackballed” by liberal media. “I’m disgusted that professionals who ostensibly have committed their entire careers to sharing truth and to providing facts and to sharing information with American voters … are fundamentally avoiding their responsibilities.”
Since declaring his candidacy on October 27, Phillips complained, he hasn’t been interviewed once on MSNBC. Ditto the big Sunday shows. Schaffer wrote “He’s been on CNN a handful of times, but never given the town-hall treatment afforded fellow single-digit candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie, both of whom happen to have challenged Donald Trump rather than Biden.”
The only broadcast outlets that seem to want him are on the right or in the middle.
“Right media has been more than invitational,” Phillips says. By contrast, “I don’t think there’s an MSNBC viewer that even knows that I’m a congressman, because what’s being portrayed is designed to prevent that education.”
Graham refused to explore the implications of Phillips being an honored guest at right-wing media outlets — after all, they, like him, want to puff Phillips up and portray him as a Biden spoiler. If that wasn’t the case, Graham and his employer wouldn’t have dropped Kennedy like a hot potato when he stopped running as a Democrat.
Graham spent his Jan. 17 column rehashing his whining on Phillips’ behalf: ‘Phillips complained to Politico that since declaring his candidacy on October 27, he hasn’t been interviewed once on MSNBC, or the big Sunday talk shows. CNN’s had him on, but not in a ‘town hall’ setting like the Republicans this cycle, or congressman candidates like Eric Swalwell and Seth Moulton in the last cycle.”
Curtis Houck effectively served as Phillip’s (paid?) PR person in a Jan. 24 post:
With the liberal media having achieved their dream 2024 match-up with former President Donald Trump all-but set to face off against President Joe Biden, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC refused to acknowledge the existence of Congressman Dean Phillips (D-MN) as President Biden’s primary challenger and pulled 20 percent in the (unofficial) New Hampshire Democratic primary.
It wasn’t surprising at all as Phillips has been an afterthought for much of this campaign in the eyes of the liberal media.
CBS Mornings came the closest to mentioning Phillips with an on-air graphic with the vote tally from the Granite State on the Democratic side with a picture of the congressman, the number of votes he received, the percentage, and just his latest name.
Houck was silent on all the press Phillips had been getting in right-wing media — including his own employer — trying to build Phillips up as a threat to Biden. Meanwhile, Graham spent his Jan. 24 podcast shilling further for him: “Democrat Dean Phillips almost hit 20 percent against President Biden. Haley’s voters were lauded for their votes, but Phillips remained an asterisk in the pro-Biden media’s coverage.” This time, he was completely silent about right-wing media support for Phillips.
Nicholas Fondacaro joined the MRC’s Phillips PR team in a Jan. 25 post touting how the MRC’s favorite non-Fox News (yet still conservative-leaning) channel covered him:
While the media largely kept the focus of Tuesday’s New Hamsphire [sic] primary on the Republican side and largely ignored the Democratic side, President Biden had a launch a last-minute and desperate write-in campaign to prevent being upstaged by challenger Congressman Dean Phillips (MN). Phillips managed to score nearly 20 percent of the vote despite the liberal media barely covering his campaign; and during NewsNation’s coverage that evening, co-anchor Chris Cuomo pointed out how the liberal media didn’t want to show him any “love.”
Contrary to how most of the liberal media tried to talk about Phillips sparingly, he was brought up multiple times by the NewsNation anchors. Cuomo and co-anchor Dan Abrams even called out the liberal media for largely refusing to give him the time of day, essentially suppressing his campaign:
[…]
With the votes still being tallied, at one point in the night, Phillips had an impressive 25 percent of the vote. “He’s got about 25 percent of the vote. Obviously, Joe Biden is a write-in candidate because he’s not even on the ballot. But nevertheless, 25 percent for one alternative Democrat,” Abrams marveled.
Graham grumbled in a Feb. 4 post that “both NPR and PBS rolled out their red carpets for South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn to talk about the Democrat presidential primary season officially beginning in his state — NPR offered eight minutes, PBS seven. Nowhere in those 15 minutes did either the hosts or the guest mention that President Biden had any primary opposition. The names Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson were completely absent.” He followed up with a Feb. 5 post devoted to whining that a former Republican chairman pointed out Phillips’ terrible showing in South Carolina):
Former RNC chairman Michael Steele awarded Democrat presidential candidate Dean Phillips a forum on their new show The Weekend on Sunday after Phillips drew two percent in the South Carolina primary. But this is MSDNC, so it was mostly so he could shame him into getting out of the race and stop “prolonging” anti-Biden narratives.
As if the Republicans will knock it off if Phillips gets out? MSNBC proudly put out the tweet of the shaming:
[…]
One could easily say: What’s the harm in staying in if he’s only pulling two percent? But somehow, Biden having any challengers, no matter how much the pro-Biden media ignore them, is dangerous to the Democrats.
“The chairman in me says, ‘What the hell you doing? And why are you doing it?’” Steele asked. He said the party chose Biden in 2020, and not Kamala Harris or Bernie Sanders, and now he’s the incumbent. “So what makes you think after that — an incumbent president, Joe Biden’s not going anywhere. He’s not stepping down!”
Again, Graham was completely silent about the agenda-driven right-wing cheerleading for Phillips that he’s perpetuating. This was all rehashed in his Feb. 5 podcast.
Phillips got only passing mentions by Graham and his gang after that — even they seemed to realize that Phillips’ campaign was going nowhere, even after that cheerleading from right-wing media. It’s as if they are being willfully oblivious to the fact that a candidate whose main constituency is right-wing media isn’t going to go far in Democratic politics. You’d think they would have learned that lesson with Kennedy.
The MRC concluded its ironic crusade with a March 21 so-called “study” by Alex Christy whining that the fringe non-Biden candidates didn’t get much coverage in non-right-wing media:
In 2020 and 2024 respectively, GOP President Donald Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden each faced three longshot primary challengers, but the media coverage of these campaigns was vastly different, a NewsBusters study has found.
Analysts analyzed all programming on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC of Trump challengers from April 15, 2019 to March 18, 2020, and of Biden challengers from March 4, 2023 to March 6, 2024, and found that the Republican challengers of former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh, and former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford got 115 interviews during the campaign. By contrast, the 2024 Democratic challengers of self-help author Marianne Williamson, environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips received only 25.
[…]
However, during the 2024 Democratic cycle, RFK Jr. received a vastly disproportionate amount of coverage as anchor after anchor warned their potentially disillusioned liberal audiences that, despite the family name, Kennedy was and is a dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and Russia apologist, the left, including 2020 Williamson, and the media’s prior record of vaccines and Russia notwithstanding. For instance, on June 20, 2023’s edition of CNN Tonight, Abby Phillip asserted, “As expected, he made a lot of wild and, frankly, dangerous claims” on The Joe Rogan Experience.
The percentage breakdowns for Democrats were 71 percent for Kennedy, 21 percent for Phillips, and just eight percent for Williamson.
As per usual, Christy refused to evaluate the performance of Fox News, even though it would have been relevant given the channel’s agenda (and that of its fellow right-wing media) of puffing up fringe Democrats.
Back to RFK Jr.
Meanwhile, the MRC did keep a flame burning for RFK Jr. — in an apparent hope that he would continue to mess with Democrats. Catherine Salgado cheered on his anti-vaxxer conspiracies in a Feb. 16 post:
A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against government efforts to silence the COVID-19 debate, to take effect after a historic Supreme Court ruling.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his fellow plaintiffs received a partial legal victory on Feb. 14 in their suit against the Biden administration’s collusion with Big Tech to censor Americans. Louisiana District Court Judge Terry Doughty granted part of the plaintiff’s requested preliminary injunction in his ruling for Kennedy v. Biden. He ordered that certain government agencies halt their anti-First Amendment collusion with Big Tech.
[…]
The “Kennedy Plaintiffs” had accused the government defendants, including Joe Biden and members of his administration, of violating the “Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”
Doughty’s ruling agreed that the plaintiffs provided evidence that “not only have the Defendants shown willingness to coerce and/or to give significant encouragement to social-media platforms to suppress free speech with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic and national elections, but they have also shown a willingness to do it with regard to other issues.” These include the climate, abortion, and critiques of Biden.
Salgado didn’t mention that Kennedy was spewing discredited anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, nor did she explain why there is a right to lie to people without consequence.
Fondacaro spent his daily hate-watch of “The View” smearing the hosts as “low I.Q.” for pointing out (not inaccurately) that Kennedy is effectively trying to buy the election by choosing a rich running mate in a March 28 post:
The low I.Q. members of ABC’s Cackling Coven (aka The View) were terrified on Thursday because they were apparently feeling the heat of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent campaign and feared it would hurt President Biden’s chances in November. They were so scared that they cooked up a fringe conspiracy theory accusing Kennedy of trying to “buy” the election by picking billionaire Nicole Shanahan to be his vice president.
[…]
Staunchly racist and anti-Semitic co-host, Sunny Hostin (the descendant of slave owners) was the first to dive into the election conspiracy waters. She clutched her pearls and suggested that Kennedy chose Shanahan, the daughter of an immigrant, for dark and sketchy motives: “Didn’t he just choose a billionaire vice president? Who can help him get on the ballots in different states in battleground states.”
Decrying that a candidate was trying to get on ballots, which required signatures and not cash, sounded very anti-democratic. She provided no evidence that Kennedy was buying off election officials to get on ballots.
Moderator Whoopi Goldberg really bought into the conspiracy theories. She said Kennedy’s pick sent a “bad message for folks” and accuse him of trying to “buy the election.” It was a serious allegation that she provided no proof for, but she received broad approval from the rest of the cast anyway.
Fondacaro censored the fact that Shanahan has, in fact, lavished millions of dollars on Kennedy’s campaign and related PACs, and she was the primary donor behind the notorious Super Bowl ad in which he tried to steal glory from his uncle, John F. Kennedy.
(Also, Fondacaro makes serious allegations all the time without proof; consider this another piece of evidence for Hostin’s eventual lawsuit against Fondacaro and his employer for his filthy lies about her.)
Fondacaro returned for an April 1 post complaining that Donald Trump got thrown into the mix about cultish behavior:
The Kennedy family has a cult following in the Democratic Party and an endorsement from them has been viewed as critical in the primaries, hence the left’s concern with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running for president as an independent against President Biden. This meant that irony levels were off the charts on Monday’s Good Morning America when ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos utilized Rory Kennedy’s cult documentary to campaign against former President Donald Trump and her brother Bobby.
On the show to hawk her new HBO documentary about the Synanon cult, Stephanopoulos queued Kennedy to draw parallels between the cult’s founder, Charles Dederich Sr., and Trump. “And you also say that we are seeing the kind of dynamic we saw in Synanon with a cult-like leader playing out in our politics today,” he stated.
Of course, Kennedy obliged:
[…]
It’s incredibly hypocritical for a Kennedy to chide others for “cult-like” behavior. The Kennedys have been treated like royalty in the Democratic Party for decades and their political endorsements, handed out from the family compound, have been coveted. The media put a lot of weight on them to, trumpeting their endorsements of candidates Obama and Biden like a new pope was selected.
And for the liberal media, describing something as a “cult” was actually good when it was used for Democrats. In 2019, NPR anchor Audie Cornish praised Obama as the “ultimate cult of personality candidate.”
Fondacaro failed to disclose that he’s part of the Trump cult that enthusiastically supports him no matter what — even after committing crimes and inciting an insurrection against the United States. He also overlooks the fact that the RFK Jr. cult, unlike that around the rest of the Kennedy family, is built around spreading lies about vaccines and pushing other health-related conspiracy theories.
Christian Baldwin presented Kennedy as a sage in an April 2 post for spouting his employer’s bogus “censorship” narrative (and for bashing Biden):
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. provided a fresh perspective on CNN, lambasting President Joe Biden’s vast censorship enterprise.
RFK Jr. appeared for an interview on April 1 with CNN anchor Erin Burnett. The third-party presidential candidate was asked if he really thought that Biden was a worse threat to democracy than former President Donald Trump.
“Listen, I can make the argument that President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, to censor his opponent,” Kennedy said. “I can say that because I just won a case in the federal court of appeals and now before the Supreme Court that shows that he started censoring not just me 37 hours after he took the oath of office, he was censoring me.”
After describing Biden’s actions as dangerous, Kennedy stated that these pro-censorship measures cannot be compared to any of Trump’s.
“No president in the country has ever done that,” Kennedy insisted. “The greatest threat to democracy is not somebody who questions election returns but a president of the United States, who uses the power of his office to force the social media companies—Facebook, Instagram [and] Twitter—-to open a portal and give access to that portal to the FBI, to the CIA, to the IRS, to CISA, to NIH, to censor his political critics.”
Baldwin failed to tell his readers that Trump and other right-wing activists didn’t merely “question election returns” — they continued to spread false conspiracy theories bout “election fraud” long after those claims had been discredited, and in doing so undermined public confidence in elections. Still, Baldwin continued to defend Kennedy:
Various federal agencies and even the White House have targeted Kennedy for posts he made relating to COVID-19. On Jan. 22, 2021, White House official Clark Humphrey emailed Twitter (now known as X) demanding that RFK Jr. be censored for a tweet calling attention to a “wave of suspicious deaths” that were occurring in patients who received COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy specifically cited the death of baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, who died shortly after publically [sic] receiving the Moderna vaccine to encourage mass vaccinations among black Americans.
In fact, Kennedy spread a demonstrable lie that the COVID vaccine killed Aaron; he actually died of natural causes. Baldwin clearly doesn’t believe that Kennedy should be held accountable for the malicious lies he spreads.
Kennedy continued to be convenient to the MRC’s anti-Biden narratives, so Baldwin gushed over him again in an April 15 post:
Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave the game away on how the Biden White House used fear and intimidation to push social media censorship.
Kennedy Jr. appeared on the April 14 episode of Dave Rubin’s The Rubin Report. During the podcast, Kennedy elucidated more on his heated interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, in which he categorized President Joe Biden as a worse threat to democracy than former President Donald Trump, much to the astonishment of the CNN host.
Kennedy used this appearance with Rubin to further justify his claims on CNN by categorizing Biden’s anti-free speech actions as a unique, unprecedented betrayal of the American identity, and that, unlike Trump, Biden has been proven to have engaged in anti-democratic activity.
Further elaborating on his CNN remarks, Kennedy said that “President Biden did something no other president in history, and a court has found this. There’s no court that’s found that President Trump tried to steal the election, tried to derail the election, or tried to start an insurrection. There may be plenty of evidence that he did that. There’s no court that has found that. But there is a court that had found that President Biden was censoring his opponents.”
Given that Kennedy has been repeatedly caught lying by spreading anti-vaxx conspiracy theories, there’s no reason to trust what he says here, and Baldwin offered none. But Kennedy is saying all the conservatively correct things, so Baldwin has no incentive to fact-check him.
Baldwin bestowed victimhood on Kennedy once again in a May 7 post:
Meta has once again deemed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ideas too dangerous to be allowed on Facebook and Instagram.
Kennedy’s Super PAC American Values 2024 (AV24) announced Sunday that it will file a lawsuit against Facebook and Instagram’s parent company after the platforms suppressed links to Kennedy’s newly released documentary, “Who is Bobby Kennedy?”
“Facebook is putting its thumb on the scale this election,” Kennedy posted on X. “Please help me understand how this Woody Harrelson film about my life violates Facebook’s community standards?”
Kennedy uploaded the 30-minute film to Facebook on May 3. But when Facebook users tried to share links to the film’s website, the platform claimed the content violated its “Community Guidelines” and would not allow users to post. Instagram users had a similar experience when trying to post the link in Instagram stories, according to screenshots included in a TikTok video that Kennedy’s team posted on May 5.
[…]
Meta has since claimed that the video being labeled spam was a mistake rather than overt censorship.
“It was mistakenly blocked and corrected within a few hours,” said Meta spokesman Andy Stone told The Times.
Baldwin failed to mention that the video was filled with lies and misinformation about vaccines — so, yes, those lies are “dangerous” and arguably justifying being blocked, accidentally or otherwise.
Brain worms and actual views
Fondacaro went into deflection mode over Kennedy’s revelation over having been diagnosed with a worm in his brain in a May 9 post:
Masters of the subject, the liberal ladies of ABC’s The View kicked off their Thursday show by sounding off on independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his past diagnosis of having a dead worm in his brain. The irony that they, of all people, were going to mock someone else for having a parasite in their brain was completely lost on the cast.
Following a soundbite of Kennedy explaining that he got the parasite while in India and that he had made a full recovery, moderator Whoopi Goldberg scoffed at his confidence. “Really? But he insists he’s still up for the gig, and even tweeted – and I don’t know why – that he could eat five more worms and still beat you-know-who and Biden in a debate,” she said.
Co-host and “comedian” Joy Behar suggested – without evidence – that the brain worm was “the reason for his irrational behavior,” but wanted to know: “what is Trump’s excuse?” “Does he also have a worm in his brain?” she quipped. “We know he suffers from narcolepsy. He’s always falling asleep.”
[…]
Kennedy might have a dead worm in his brain, but how does The View cast explain the things that come out of their mouths?
Then again, none of the hosts are anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists like Kennedy is, something Fondacaro failed to point out.
A May 29 post by Sarah Butler sorta admitted the truth about the MRC’s promotion of Kennedy:
On Tuesday, CNN This Morning host Kasie Hunt asked former White House correspondent Margaret Talev which major party candidate would suffer the most damage if Robert Kennedy Jr. were on the ballot in November. With the presidential election drawing near, RFK Jr. Kennedy was at 15 percent in the polls. Hunt described RFK Jr. as “dangerous” for the Biden team after he reportedly met the requirements to get on the Michigan ballot, a critical state President Biden was faltering in.
Former President Donald Trump and Kennedy attended the Libertarian Party’s convention last Saturday as they worked to potentially win over third-party voters. Talev noted that Trump “has made inroads into the Libertarian Party just as he has made some inroads into every facet of American politics” but followed that by saying Kennedy has the potential to be a “spoiler” in the upcoming presidential election.
When Hunt asked Talev which majority party candidate would suffer the most damage if Kennedy was on the ballot, her answer speculated that both candidates would be affected. Talev stated that he was seen, by swing voters, as a middle ground between Trump and Biden’s policies. Describing him as a “fascination to many” who may not know his policies or stances on certain issues outside of knowing the “Kennedy” family name.
Of course, Butler offered no information about Kennedy’s “policies or stances on certain issues” — that’s because the MRC largely opposes what he’s actually running on, as Tierin-Rose Mandelburg admitted in a May 9 post:
It’s absolutely jaw dropping to me that people openly support what can be summed up as nothing less than infanticide.
In an interview with podcaster Sage Steele, Democratic Presidential nominee Robert Kennedy Jr. was asked about his ideas when it comes to abortion restrictions. Kennedy, very confidently, insisted that all abortion decisions should be made by a mother and that he supports abortion “even if it’s full term.”
[…]
Steele pushed back in order to get Kennedy to clarify his stance: “Even if it’s full term?”
What Kennedy said next shocked me. “Even if it’s full term,” he said, meaning that he’d support a woman’s decision to abort her child, even if it is fully formed and merely a few inches up the birth canal.
LifeNews.com did indicate that even though Kennedy claims that he “may not support late-term abortions personally, his answer makes it crystal clear that his political policy would allow late-term abortions with no limits.”
In response to the clip, many pro-lifers were stunned and heartbroken.
[…]
I pray for the day that pro-aborts either wake up or stop ignoring the realities of what abortion is. Until then, that population, the most vulnerable population in our society, is under eminent risk with mindsets like Kennedy’s.
Mandelburg wouldn’t explain why her employer continues to promote a candidate whose actual views — as opposed to his Biden spoiler potential — it finds so abhorrent. Indeed, Mandelburg appears to be so detached from anything beyond her anti-abortion extremist activism that she bizarrely, and falsely, called Kennedy the “Democratic Presidential nominee,” apparently oblivious to the fact not only that Biden has sealed up the nomination but that Kennedy stopped running as a Democrat months ago.